Last summer, a Chinese telecommunications giant founded by a former People's Liberation Army (PLA) engineer was rebuffed in its effort to sell vast quantities of equipment to Sprint Nextel - an American company that provides communication services to the U.S. Defense Department and other government agencies. An interagency group known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) took a hard look at the proposal and, quite sensibly, rejected it on national security grounds.